Andy Warhol is a talent beyond pop art, often picking up his 35mm Minox camera to capture photographs of his daily surroundings, fascinations, and moments. Ever an opportunist, having a camera in hand enabled Warhol to capture now-iconic imagery, of which more than 40 are now on display at the Voyages avec Warhol exhibition, presented by Château La Coste in collaboration with Hedges Projects.

Curated from the James R. Hedges, IV Collection, the collection includes imagery spotlighting dear friends of Warhol’s, like Halston, Dolly Parton, and Keith Haring. Likewise, we find lesser-known examples in the artist’s oeuvre, showcasing the interiors of cars he may have found or traveled in, airplanes, hotel lobby chandeliers and seedy toilets, as well as many examples from Warhol’s “Sex Parts and Torsos” collection examining the nude male form.

Voyages avec Warhol, which comes in conjunction with Rencontres d’Arles festival, is open to the public at La Bastide Gallery until September 10, 2023.

In other news, MSCHF is auctioning a hand bag that’s smaller than a grain of salt.

La Galerie Bastide
Château La Coste
2750 Route de la Cride
13610 Le Puy Sainte Raparade, France

This week’s photography feature explores the unique exposures captured by the rising experimental photographer Christy Lee Rogers. The Sony World Open Award Winner recently unveiled her latest collection, Luminescence, which comprises Baroque-style photographs created by submerging clothed models in dramatic lighting.

Hailing from Honolulu, Hawaii, Rogers is a visual artist specialising in underwater photography and videos, known for using Chiaroscuro lighting in much of her work. The other-worldly, intensely dramatic and colourful images she creates, as seen below, are often compared to paintings by Baroque artists such as Caravaggio or Rubens.

In 2019, Rogers won the coveted ‘Open Photographer of the Year’ award at the Sony World Photography Awards. She is also a two-time finalist in the Contemporary Talents Award, which is issued annually by the Foundation François Schneider in France. Rogers was also recently commissioned by Apple to use the powerful iPhone 11Pro’s cameras to create some underwater art.

Rogers uses multiple layers of light and dark water in her preferred medium to create the characteristically abstract and miraged effect reminiscent of classical paintings. Over the past decade, this method has been employed to create various images, some of which you might recognise from album covers, most notably that for Orchesography, the 2019 album of English new wave band Wang Chung. Elsewhere in the musical world, some of Rogers’ work was selected for display at the 2013–14 performance season of the Angers-Nantes Opera in France.

As a recent press release notes, Luminescence is the ability of certain objects to generate light through the excited state of its atoms when exposed to frequencies like ultraviolet light. Rogers uses this phenomenon as a metaphor for our own ability to focus on positive energy to bring optimism and colour to our surroundings.

This latest series – seen below – uses pitch-black pools with models illuminated by high-powered underwater spotlights for optimal contrast. The importance of such a contrast was prominently outlined in Aldous Huxley’s Heaven and Hell, an essay supplementary to The Doors of Perception.

“Light and colour tend to take on a preternatural quality when seen in the midst of environing darkness,” Huxley noted. “Fra Angelico’s ‘Crucifixion’ at the Louvre has a black background. So have the frescoes of the Passion painted by Andrea del Castagno for the nuns of Sant’ Appollonia at Florence. Hence the visionary intensity, the strange transporting power of these extraordinary works”.

Adding: “In an entirely different artistic and psychological context, the same device was often used by Goya in his etchings. Those flying men, that horse on the tightrope, the huge and ghastly incarnation of Fear – all of them stand out, as though floodlit, against a background of impenetrable night.”

Below, we present some images from Christy Lee Rogers’ Luminescence. More of her magnificent work can be seen on her website, and you can follow her on Instagram here.

“Mobile photography” and “camera phone” are catchphrases so overused nowadays that people have stopped paying attention to the essence of the matter. And that essence is the fact that our smartphones are perfectly capable of capturing stunning photos worthy of an art exhibition.

Samsung decided to show just that with its “My World” photo exhibition, shot solely with the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Now, that may or may not be a PR stunt, that’s irrelevant. The important thing is that some of the pictures I saw at the art hall were amazing. And what’s even more important is that most of you could achieve similar results with your S23 Ultra, or any other modern phone, for that matter, with just a little effort.

I know what you’re thinking right now: “Art exhibitions are booooring.” And you’re right to some extent. I’m not going to bore you with a sophisticated breakdown of every photo and try to find words in the dictionary that are super hard to pronounce and understand just for the sake of it. I’m going to do something completely different here. Try to share tips and tricks from the kitchen and help you snap the same amazing photos I saw at the exhibition.The beauty of it is that I’m not a photographer—not even close. I suck at taking good photos, even with a DSLR. My source and guru is Boni Bonev, one of the most famous modern Bulgarian photographers. You’ll be excused if you haven’t heard of him, but his work speaks for itself. And unlike many other famous artists, he doesn’t mind sharing all his little secrets when it comes to mobile photography. So, let’s get to it, shall we?

How to make stunning landscape shots with your smartphone

Landscape photography is one of the most popular among amateurs and professionals (we’ll leave pet photos out of these statistics). So, how do you snap a perfect landscape photo with your phone?

Composition: This is the most important thing in landscape photography. Most of the time, the objects you photograph are static, so you have some freedom to arrange the shot as you like. Don’t fill your shot with too many objects, use negative space—large open areas of sky, sea, or something plain with not a lot of details. Using negative space emphasizes the other (and more important) objects in your shot.

Rule of Thirds: This is a very important aspect, so it deserves a separate bullet point (even though it’s technically part of composition). When you have land and sky (or sea and sky) in your shot, you need to balance the part that you want to emphasize. If there are birds in the sky as your main element, the horizon should, in general, be placed in the lower part of the shot. If you’re focusing on a range of mountains or some majestic trees, the horizon should be drawn higher, leaving roughly two thirds of land and one third of sky in the shot.

The Golden Hour: Lighting is super important when it comes to photography, and even more important when your sensor is as tiny as your fingernail. Smartphones can snap some amazing photos if there’s enough light at the scene, but it’s important to know that there’s a specific time of the day called the “golden hour”, which is just after sunrise and before sunset. Shadows are soft, and light falls at an angle, creating distinct shadows and emphasizing objects you photograph.

Reflections: A very powerful tool in every photographer’s arsenal. When shooting landscapes, you can make use of water or other reflective surfaces to add spice to your shot. Reflections create symmetry, which our brain automatically finds pleasing. You can also use reflections to show something that’s not in your original frame.

How to make stunning portrait shots with your smartphone

Easy! Just turn “portrait mode” on, and you’re all set. I’m joking, of course, it’s not that simple. Even though the “bokeh” effect (blurring the background) is a powerful portrait tool, it’s not the only one. You can make your portraits stand out even if your phone doesn’t support bokeh or the aforementioned portrait mode is not very good. Here’s how.

Use the light: The sole purpose of bokeh is to emphasize the object you’re shooting. This can be done using light alone. Make sure the face of the person you’re photographing is well lit while the background is darker.

Background colors: Sometimes you can’t play with light, that’s where background colors come into play. You can use solid and soft colors for the background, or do it vice versa—use something extremely bright. The goal is to create the necessary contrast to emphasize the face you’re photographing.

Mind the distance: The best portrait shots (the ones you see at art exhibitions) are shot from a pretty close distance. Don’t be afraid to move in closer, this will allow you to leave distractions off your shot and focus on the face of the person you’re shooting.

Wander the world with wide-eyed wonder from the ease of your armchair, as Our Planet II, an inspiring new Netflix four-episode docuseries (premieres June 14), unveils answers to mysteries about why and how billions of animals relentlessly migrate — phenomenal travel adventures that have criss-crossed our globe for millennia. Silverback Films and its Emmy Award-winning team behind Planet Earth and Our Planet dazzle once again with gorgeous swoop-and-soar, dive-and-discover, cutting-edge cinematography, which showcases intimate storylines that are pulse-racing, perilous, enlightening, tender and joyful. “Only now are we beginning to understand that all life on Earth depends on the freedom to move,” declares narrator Sir David Attenborough, British author, biologist, broadcaster and natural historian, whose famously gold-standard soothing voice resonates. “Experience the extraordinary journeys that shape our world,” he invites. “For many animals, the instinct to move is overwhelming, despite the dangers. But for every trip that ends in tragedy, countless millions reach their destination.” This is an opportunity to peek at far-flung getaways and creatures that you might otherwise never see. Orchestrating this ambitious project, the program’s crew touched down in 21 countries on seven continents, tallying up 934 filming days, 292 travel days and 85 quarantine days. More than 200 people were involved in creating the show, including 50 camera operators. Special kudos to music composers Jasha Klebe and Thomas Farnon, who have scored stellar high notes for this production; the official soundtrack (released June 14) is available to stream/download on Amazon and other major digital music services. Series Producer Huw Cordey and Executive Producer Keith Scholey share their personal behind-the-scenes insights below.

Four thematic narratives — World on the Move, Following the Sun, The Next Generation and Freedom to Roam — weave this extravaganza together. Each episode covers three months of Earth’s orbit, celebrating key animal movements. At every hour of every day, astonishing masses of animals — gigantic and minuscule; in the air, on the ground, throughout the seas — are guided by instinct, sun position and a compass-like mental-mapping agility that is intrinsic to their essence, replicating the same often arduous routes that their ancestors followed eons ago, seeking havens to eat, drink, breed, give birth and secure safety. Each episode culminates with a cliffhanger.

Elegant drone shots record landscapes’ grandeur, as well as ride the skies alongside flocks of birds, so proximate that you can stare at their eyes and almost sense the air currents uplifting their wings. Newly advanced low-light camera technology now makes possible documentation of night activities and the infiltration of darkest rainforest hideaways. Underwater camera submergence spotlights splashy revelations.

For travel lovers, destinations abound. Among the favorites: lions and buffalo in Botswana; humpback whales in the Bering Sea; Laysan albatross and tiger sharks in the Northern Hawaiian Islands; lions, zebras and wildebeests in Tanzania’s Serengeti; rarely seen Tawaki penguins in Fiordland, New Zealand; elusive pumas in Patagonia; nesting turtles on Mexico’s Escobilla Beach; elephant seals in the Falkland Islands; Gentoo penguins in Antarctica; gray whales off the coasts of California and Mexico; orcas (killer whales) hunting in California’s Monterey Bay and, in the Himalayas, Demoiselle cranes that forge the most strenuous migration of any bird species, navigating at heights of almost five miles above sea level over the stupendous Asian mountain range and continuing across the desolate Gobi Desert in Mongolia before wintering in Khichan, India, where villagers kindly welcome them.

Understanding The Importance of Migration

Huw Cordey, Series Producer: “The integrity of every habitat is dependent on the animals moving in and out of it, particularly those in the more Northern and Southern parts of our planet. But, even in jungles along the Equator, you have animals moving very large distances. Movement is absolutely fundamental to every single habitat on Earth.”

Keith Scholey, Executive Producer: “It’s also about the life cycles of animals, and how crazy they sometimes are. The journey of the sockeye salmon is familiar, but I think a lot of people don’t realize that they are actually programmed to breed and die. They spend their life as an ocean fish until that one journey up the river.”

Embracing a Team Spirit

Scholey: “The scientists in the field, the ones who live in these remote places, are the people who know those stories. We are totally dependent upon their knowledge and their skills. Once we actually get on location, our experienced producers, directors and cinematographers can jump in and choose which of those stories to follow.”

Cordey: “That’s why I don’t believe in storyboards for wildlife films. It’s not that we don’t think very carefully about the sequences that we’re going to film, but if you go into a shoot with a storyboard, you will miss important things. Animals don’t read scripts. They do unexpected things and you have to be prepared. I try to get my teams to tear up the shot list at the airport. But we can’t make films without the scientists, or at least the scientific information that they provide.”

Scholey: “When that perfect combination of scientists and filmmakers come together, it’s really powerful. Sometimes the scientists even look at our footage and say, ‘Wow, I never knew that. That’s really helpful.’”

Cordey: “Obviously this is an entertainment series, and we do need to get the big iconic animals in there. But while the audience might come to it for polar bears and lions, I always think the things they remember are the smaller stories. Locusts, for example. Christmas Island crablets. When it comes to migrating animals, some of the best stories are birds, because of the distances they travel. We tried to use a balanced approach, and keep in mind that some shoots won’t work out the way we hoped they would. Although I have to say that for a project that was three years in the making, covering many different species across every single continent, there was very little that didn’t work out – which is, in my experience, quite unusual. I think we got a little lucky with some of the stories, but our research was also very good.”

Excelling at Exciting Film Advances

Cordey: “Nighttime and drone technology have vastly improved in the last five years. Macro technology, too – there are some very, very innovative macro lenses out there. Our bee shoot is a good example of a very special grip. It was designed by the cameraman that shot the bee story, and the whole shoot was probably a year in the planning. We were working with some very experienced beekeepers in Germany, as well as a photographer who has done an amazing book on bees and a scientist who had been studying bees for years. That was a classic example of where we’re dipping into years of experience to try to film the very best sequence we possibly can.”

Surprising With Spectacular Animal Stories

Cordey: “In the case of the Laysan albatross, we had the rare opportunity to spend almost the entire shoot following the trials and tribulations of a single chick. There it was — this big, chunky chick — and we could just stick with it for six weeks. The shoot itself was very interesting: It took six days to sail there from Hawaii, and I believe we are the first natural history series to film the maiden flight of a Laysan albatross. They’re the longest-lived birds of all, and they take this enormous journey around the planet for years before they breed for the first time. The original idea was to do an underwater shoot with the tiger sharks waiting in the shallows at Laysan, but the first day the tiger sharks were around, the crew got into these inflatable boats — and two sharks attacked them. It was like something out of Jaws. The crew was panicked, and basically made an emergency landing on the sand.”

Talking About The Impact of Climate Change

Cordey: “The changing world is very noticeable at the poles, the ends of the world. We were on a boat in the Arctic for a month, and our sightings of polar bears were virtually nil. We got [an] amazing sequence in the last 48 hours — the crew came across that mother and her two cubs and they were immediately on it. The audience is almost seeing it unfold in real time. The polar bear mother climbs on the island, followed by one cub, and the second cub just couldn’t do it. There were hardened Arctic watchers on that boat who were in tears, because they thought it was just so sad…. In the narration, I think David [Attenborough] handles it very well, because he tells you what’s going on. But as is always the way with David, he doesn’t push it. He just says, ‘Look, this is how it is.’ Where we witness unsettling scenes, we think sometimes you have to show the audience for them to really understand. It’s a delicate balance though, across the whole show. I think we have a duty of care.”

Cordey: “Animals move for a better life. As climate change makes things more difficult, the need to move is even greater. Of course, there’s a huge analogy there with humans, and it’s pretty understandable. If you grow up in a place where you can barely grow food to feed your family, you’re going to want to move.”

Scholey: “The underlying environmental story of Our Planet II is that to have a healthy planet, you can’t have borders. You have to let life roam. We as humans like to divide the world. We like to have territory and we like to protect our borders and stop movement. We have to use our intelligence to look at the natural world and compensate for this tendency of ours, if we want to actually allow the natural world to function. Because so many ecosystems on which we ultimately rely for our agricultural health need to have this movement of nature.”

Balancing Tourism and Conservation

Scholey: “Through my career, I’ve seen this really interesting scenario happen with the natural world. The big picture is that habitats are being destroyed, and there is less wildlife in the world than when I started. So that’s the downside. The upside is that there have been more people studying the natural world, and in some places, there has been intense conservation. That has led to two things: more knowledge, but actually more habituation.”

Cordey: “Places that become more protected get tourism, and through tourism, animals become more used to humans. They don’t see us as a threat. But it is the most extraordinary thing to get that close to a large, dangerous predator on foot, like a puma. That’s the most surprising thing. The crew did come across a male puma that was on a kill. It wasn’t one of the habituated animals, and he looked extraordinarily angry. They had to back off really, really quickly. So it’s not the species, it’s individuals.”

The rise of digital photography seemed to signal the end of analog for a Longview resident but he’s aiming to change that by bringing film back to the community in a familiar way.

Jamie Maldonado is a local photographer with a masters degree in Studio Art from Texas A&M Commerce. He previously served as an assistant at Kilgore College where he said he fostered his love of photography. Now, Maldonado wants to give back to the community by opening a nonprofit community darkroom he’s calling the Piney Woods Darkroom.

Over the last several years, he’s been thinking of ideas related to film photography and the one he kept returning to was of a film lab, he said. After speaking with a fellow photographer friend who runs a community darkroom in California, Maldonado was struck by the similarity to what he used to do at Kilgore College.

“We had a darkroom and classes and everything and I’m like, we don’t have that anymore, all those are gone and there’s nowhere to even buy film anymore and I started thinking about if there’s enough activity and action in East Texas that this could work and I started looking around,” he explained.

He knows several photographers who shoot film and have recently got into the practice and realized there may be a market locally for film photography and development, he said.

In Maldonado’s opinion, digital photography definitely has its merits as a faster medium that lends itself to assignment work like journalism, quick turnaround commercial portraits and general photography. However, while snapping unlimited photos sounds like a great idea, it can create its own issues, he said.

Digital photography allows for capturing thousands of photos quickly, most of which don’t end up being used and only the best few make it through, he said. This can lead to losing faith in one’s ability as a photographer and prioritizing quantity over quality, he said.

“It becomes almost a frantic concern that you’re gonna miss a moment and you gotta keep shooting,” he said.

Shooting with a film camera brings back the “magic” of not knowing how a photo turned out until it’s been developed, which makes the photographer have to trust themselves again, he said.

Younger generations are also discovering the tangible benefits that come with film photography, he said. 

“For people who grew up with things only on their phones, it’s a different thing to hold a picture in your hand,” he said.

Not only does film photography not come with the distractions of screen notifications or charging a battery, film cameras are also safe from being hacked and having its photos stolen, he said.

“There is the novelty factor for young people but I noticed older people also are rediscovering it and appreciating that it’s more stripped down (than digital photography),” he said.

Maldonado plans to teach workshops and courses at the darkroom including basics like how to manage the lab. The darkroom would provide access to specialized sinks, photo enlargers, developing tanks, scanners, books, photo editing software and more, he said. It would be open to adults 18 years of age and older, with younger photographers potentially having access via parent accompaniment, he said.

While there would be a session fee to use the darkroom, he wants the facility to be accessible and aims to make it as affordable as possible.

Maldonado has launched a fundraiser to help get the Piney Woods Darkroom established and on its feet. According to him, the project could cost anywhere between $5,000 and $20,000 depending on what’s included. He’s set a flexible goal of $10,000 which would go toward renting a space and building it up with all the needed materials. 

Since starting the fundraiser, he’s raised $4,200 through an Indiegogo page and his website, he said. Once the darkroom is established and operating for a period of time, he’ll be able to apply for grants and establish a funding base, he said.

Two local fundraising events are set to come up, one on Friday at The Foundry in Tyler and one at the next Longview ArtWalk on July 6 at Silver Grizzly Espresso. The fundraiser will include 8×10 inch polaroid portraits with the proceeds going to fund the darkroom, he said.

To donate or for more information visit tinyurl.com/fa7p2tvm or pineywoodsdarkroom.org